SOCIAL NETWORK IN THE PERFORMANCE OF RITUAL

ABSTRACT

In this paper I am going to focus on the performance of ritual and how their practice varied from a very less population to a very large population and across the borders. How migration and tours help in the social networking of rituals, festive events as well as the performance. In this paper I have also mentioned some local rituals and festive events which has started in a small part but now it is practiced in different part of the world.
___________________________________________________
VIVEK KUMAR

Social practices and rituals are the constant activities that helps in the structuring of the lives of different communities as well as groups which are shared by and are relevant to most of their members. These are very important as they reassert the identity of the people who practice them either as a group or as a society. It is the affirmations of participants’ identities and beliefs as well as their power. Rituals not only help in the marking of passing of the seasons but also help in the marking of the events in the agricultural calendar. One can trace a community’s world view and the perception of their history and memory with the help or rituals performed by the given community. Performance is an inclusive term meaning the activities of actors, dancers, musicians, and their spectators and audiences. Performances have occurred among all the world's peoples from the dawn of human cultures. Dancing, singing, wearing masks and costumes; impersonating other people, animals, or supernatural (or being possessed by these others); acting stories, retelling the hunt; re-presenting alternative histories; rehearsing and preparing special places and times for these presentations—these are all coexistent with the human condition. Performance and ritual interrelate in a myriad of combinations: in initiations and shamanic healings and exorcisms; in public sacred and secular ceremonies such as the American president or the installation of a judge, the Hindu temple service, the daily facing to Mecca of Muslims and in the daily rituals that individuals perform to maintain the continuity of their individual, family, and professional roles. There are ritual performances, rituals in performances, the ritual frames separating performance reality from the ordinary, and the ritual process underlying how performances are made.


Ritual performances have an economic aspect and impact on the communities enacting them. In premodern, as well as modern and postmodern societies, a sizable proportion of a community's wealth, time, and energy is dedicated to ritual performances. According to Durkheim, the collective rituals and gatherings suggest that she/he is participating in something bigger than themselves. They are part of history or they are morally sanctioned or truly belong to a group. These Rituals vary from a very small gathering to large scale social celebration and commemorations, whether performed public or private.

Some rituals or the events are key parts of public life like New Year carnivals, beginning of Spring or the end of harvest and these are open to all members of society. Birth, Weeding and Burial ceremony are two such typical examples. It is nearly impossible to trace the origin of such worldwide rituals. Carnivals are characterized by an exuberant outburst of public and private masking, partying, dancing, parading, music making, and drinking. Carnivals are celebrated primarily in Europe and the Western Hemisphere, but their performance practices in the New World and West Indian diasporic communities include elements from Africa, Asia, and Native America. Taken as a whole, the carnival complex is a ritual performance of great magnitude. Days or weeks are spent celebrating as the festivities take over entire cities. To some degree, carnivals may be classified as antireligious religious performances, because they could not exist without being in oppositional reference to religious and civil authorities. But, at the same time, there is much going on that is officially sanctioned, well-organized, and tourist-friendly.  Social practices and rituals are strongly affected by the changes that communities undergo in modern societies because they depend so much on the broad participation of practitioners and others in the communities themselves. Different processes such as migration, the general introduction of formal education, the growing influence of major world religions and other effects of globalization have particularly marked effect on these practices.

One of the examples that I would like to mention is the celebration of “Chhath Puja”. Chhath Puja was predominantly celebrated in the Hindi belt of northern India. This festival includes many rituals as well as social practices but because of the globalization as well as migration the rituals of Chhath Puja has travelled in different parts of the world. In 2016, more than 600 Indian-Americans have celebrated Chhath Puja in the US. The social network becomes very strong when it comes to migration. Social practices as well as rituals often serve as special occasions when people return to their homes so that they can celebrate with their families and community and reaffirming their cultural identity and through which they can link to their community traditions.

Another one festive event is Karva Chauth. Karva Chauth originated and came to be celebrated only in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent, including cities of Lahore, Multan. Karva Chauth is mostly celebrated in Northern India. But it has also travelled to different part of the world. Many rituals as well as performances which allow for the blending of social and aesthetic impulses of culture and represents an affirmative understanding of culture.

In many communities, it is found that the tourists are participating in large numbers in other’s festive events and it is evident that there can be positive aspects of their involvement but the festivals often suffer in the same way as traditional performing arts. To ensure the continuity of social practices, rituals or festive events it mainly requires the mobilization of a very large number of individuals and the social, political and legal institutions and mechanisms of the society. While respecting the rituals and customary performances which may limit the participation of certain groups and for which it should be desirable to encourage the broadest public participation possible.

 

REFERENCES:

1.      Bauman, Richard, “Performance” in A Companion to Folklore, Wiley-Blackwell

2.      Salamon, Hagar and Goldberg, Harvey, “Myth-Ritual-Symbol” in A Companion to Folklore, Wiley-Blackwell

3.      Hurd, Madeleine, “Introduction – Social Movements: Ritual, Space and Media”, Culture Unbound, Volume 6, 2014: 287–303. Hosted by Linköping University Electronic Press

4.      Social practices, rituals and festive events, Intangible Cultural Heritage (https://ich.unesco.org/en/social-practices-rituals-and-00055)

5.      Performance and Ritual, (https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/performance-and-ritual)

6.      (https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/Over-600-Indian-Americans-celebrate-Chhath-in-U.S./article16439214.ece)


Comments

  1. Anonymous9 July 2020 at 20:10

    Woww... Great twist given to folklore studies.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE UNWORTHY OLD WOMAN: BERTOLT BRECHT

Image
AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF BRECHT'S "DIE UNWÜRDIGE GREISIN" My grandmother was seventy-two years old when my grandfather died. He had a small lithographer's office in a small Baden town and worked there with two or three assistants until his death. My grandmother took care of the household without a maid, looked after the old, rickety house and cooked for the men and children. She was a small, skinny woman with lively lizard eyes, but slow speech. She had raised five children of the seven she had borne, with very meager means. She'd gotten smaller of that over the years. Of the children, the two girls went to America and two sons moved away as well. Only the youngest, who had a weak health, remained in the town. He became a printer and laid himself a too big family. So she was alone in the house when my grandfather had died. The children wrote letters about the problem of what would happen to her. One could offer her a home, and th
Read more

'Das Märchen' und die Interpretation von dem Märchen ,,Der Schatten" von Hans Christian Andersen.

Image
Märchen „Unter einem Märchen verstehen wir seit Herder und den Brüdern Grimm eine mit dichterischer Phantasie entworfene Erzählung besonders aus der Zauberwelt, eine nicht an die Bedingungen des wirklichen Lebens geknüpfte wunderbare Geschichte, die hoch und niedrig mit Vergnügen anhören, auch wenn sie diese unglaublich finden.“ [1]   Folk/Fairytales are utopias with compensatory function, who owe their trajectory to concrete social and economic relations. —. [2] Heute wird das Märchen definiert als eine phantasievolle, frei erfundene Prosaerzählung, die keinerlei wirkliche Begebenheiten als Grundlage hat. Es wird das Unglaubwürdige und Unwahrscheinliche im Gegensatz zu maere angesprochen. Das Wort ʺMärchenʺ ist eine Verkleinerungsform des mittelhochdeutschen Begriffs maere und bedeutet so viel wie Gerücht, Erzählung oder Bericht. Unter maere wurden ursprünglich gesprochene, vorgetragene Erzähltexte unterschiedlicher Art verstanden. Im Spätmittelalter wurde das Wort enger gefa
Read more

DER COMIC UND WILIHELM BUSCHS: MAX UND MORITZ

Image
DER COMIC In diesem Vortrag werde ich etwas über Comics, ihre Entstehung, die historische Analyse und einen der berühmtesten Comiczeichner Wilhelm Busch und sein Werk Max und Moritz erklären. DIE DEFINITION VON DEM COMIC Von Anfang an hat sich die Definition des Begriffs Comic verändert. 1993 definierte Scott McCloud Comics als „zu räumlichen Sequenzen angeordnete, bildliche oder andere Zeichen, die Informationen vermitteln und/oder eine ästhetische Wirkung beim Betrachter erzeugen“. [1]   Er nimmt damit Will Eisners Definition auf, der Comics als sequenzielle Kunst bezeichnet. Im deutschsprachigen Raum wird das von McCloud definierte Medium auch allgemein als „Bildgeschichte“ bezeichnet und der Comic als dessen moderne Form seit dem 19. Jahrhundert. [2] Nach Wikipedia, Comic ist eine Bezeichnung für die Darstellung eines Vorgangs oder einer Geschichte in einer Folge von Bildern. In der Regel sind die Bilder gezeichnet und werden mit Text kombiniert.
Read more